I. The Darkness Before the Awakening The myth begins in collapse. The gods, once radiant, find themselves stripped of power. Mahishasura, buffalo-headed and unrelenting, has seized the heavens. His reign is not one of wisdom or balance, but of brute force, arrogance, and the stubborn insistence of chaos against order. The gods wander, dispossessed, their weapons shattered, their authority mocked. Such is the texture of certain moments in history: the sense of a collective falling backwards, of progress reversed, of justice dismembered before our eyes. A society that once dreamt of light finds itself dragged back into a regressive night, ruled not by luminous sovereignty but by those who thrive on imbalance, who wear the mask of benevolence while feeding on dependency and distortion. The Puranic imagination teaches us to see such moments not merely as political accidents but as metaphysical ruptures. For when Mahishasura reigns, the world is not simply under poor administration - it is under siege by
forces that undermine the very principle of order, justice, and vitality. In such times, the question is not “who will win the next contest of power?” but rather: will Durga awaken? II. Durga as Shakti: The Ontology of Power When the gods admit their helplessness, Durga is born - not as a concession, but as the very force of life itself. The story is clear: the gods’ powers are insufficient; they must pool their energies, and out of their surrender emerges a new potency, radiant and terrible, beautiful and fierce. Durga is not simply another warrior in the field - she is Shakti, the animating energy without which the universe is inert. Philosophically, Shakti reveals that sovereignty is not an arrangement of offices, nor a set of technocratic instruments. It is vitality, the pulse of collective will, the raw, breathing energy of a people. Without Shakti, governance becomes a corpse animated by external wires, hollow and mechanical. When regressive orders…
